IBM announced new cloud services to deliver advanced software, computer lab resources and services to students and researchers at schools, colleges and universities, without the need for advanced IT expertise at those locations.
The IBM SmartCloud for Education is a set of cloud services and offerings designed to help education systems leverage predictive analytics to get real-time insights on student and institutional performance, enhance researcher effectiveness, and alleviate constrained lab resources for learning.
By using the IBM SmartCloud for Education services, K-12 schools and higher education institutions can address significant challenges they face: student retention, graduation rates, grant funding, and demands for IT resources for learning and research. Schools can analyze their own data using new SPSS models and tools running in a cloud to identify at-risk students at an early stage. Additional cloud-based social networking tools help discover and recommend funding opportunities and collaborators to researchers. Students and educators can also benefit from self-service reservation of and seamless access to virtual computer resources both on campus and on the IBM public cloud.
“Cloud computing offers educational institutions the ability to transform learning processes to be more student-centered, as well as the potential to reduce costs through shared services. Our announcements today lay the groundwork for institutions, systems, and states to begin creating these integrated cloud services for their constituents,” said Michael King, vice president, IBM Global Education Industry.
IBM has been collaborating with a community of leaders to create innovative approaches with cloud computing to help transform education. For instance, the IBM Cloud Academy is uniquely designed for K-12 schools and higher education institutions actively integrating cloud technologies into their infrastructures to share best practices and work together on this transformation. By encouraging collaboration among members and with IBM researchers, developers, and IT architects, the IBM Cloud Academy includes participating institutions in a community that helps maximize the benefits of cloud computing investments.
By Telecomlead.com Team